Homeschool Summer ☀️ School Incentive Store

Since my kiddos were less than thrilled about my Summer School plan to get caught up. I decided to up the ante on our incentives with a super-fun Summer School Store.

I decided that we would make our own play money to earn and use to make purchases, I’m calling them “sun coins”. I’ve seen others use Monopoly money or raffle tickets. Making our own money was fun and we didn’t have to order anything online or go to the store. I found a sun template printable here:

https://printcolorfun.com/wp-content/uploads/print-this.php?printable=blank-sun.png

I printed the image 16 times per page on some bright neon red/orange printer paper that the previous owners left behind in the new house. Then I let each one of my 3 kiddos draw faces on a sheet of sunshines. We recently learned about Japanese style Kawaii art and the kiddos enjoyed giving the sunshine shapes cute faces. After adding adorable faces, I laminated the sheets and cut out the sun coins.

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Next, I brainstormed ideas of ways the kiddos can earn sun coins and what they can purchased with them. I typed up the charts and printed them on the same cool paper. Then I hung the charts on the wall in the kitchen where they are easy to see. You might notice that some of the ways to earn coins also encourage me to exercise. Guess I could use a little motivation myself! Ha!

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I went shopping for merchandise to stock our store and found what I wanted at Target.com, amazon.com, the Dollar Tree, and Goodwill. The last step was setting up our “Summer School Store” in the mostly empty living room of the house we’re renting. I organized the items onto boxes by price. Dollar Tree toys, snacks from Target, and books from Goodwill are 4 sun coins, rolls of duct tape from amazon.com and games from Goodwill are 6 sun coins. At the grand opening, each kiddo bought a Dollar Tree toy and pitched in 2 coins each for a game to share.

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My fingers are crossed that this system will be adequately motivating for my kiddos and simple enough for me to sustain for the summer! So far, so good. The kiddos are thrilled to go shopping again (they haven’t gone to the store with E or I since February!).

The best part is, most of the stuff that they are “buying” is stuff that I probably would’ve just given them anyway. The kids are having fun earning coins to exchange for prizes/treats/activities and learning some basics about how to manage money too. They have to count their coins, add up prices, save for bigger rewards, and they can’t get everything that they want at once.

💰 How do you motivate your kiddos?
💰 What motivates you to do something that you don’t want to do?